William Shakespeare's Macbeth

“When our actions do not, our fears do make us traitors.” In the story Macbeth by William Shakespeare this was a basic theme of the book, as Macbeth was faced with many very hard choices and dealt with a lot of pressure from people around him. He soon began to be so obsessed with power that he began to go insane. Macbeth had a difficult and troubling process to gain the power he wanted. He also began to take down other people with him, like his wife who went crazy and eventually killed herself. In this story the best quote is “so foul and fair a day I have not seen.” This quote means that everyday even though there is a lot of bad there are also in the world at the same time. Overall Macbeth had many fatal flaws and didn’t succeed in his power struggle and many people he crossed turned out to be his downfall.

In the beginning, Macbeth was a General in the Scottish army who was loved by the people and was already a Thane. When he met the weird sisters they prophesied that he would be king one day. “All hail Macbeth! That shalt be king hereafter.” Macbeth just wasn’t aware of the things he would have to do for that power. Macbeth’s wife was the first person to pressure him into killing to gain his power. He invited King Duncan to spend the night at his house and his wife devised a plan to kill him. In fact she even says of Duncan “O, never shall sun that morrow see!” She drugs the guards and takes their knives and makes Macbeth stab Duncan in his sleep. After this murder Macbeth begins to kill many others just to maintain the power that he unfairly earned. The weird sisters also tell Macbeth three things that must come true in order for him to die. In the end Macbeth suffered a gruesome death by having his head chopped off. All in all, Macbeth’s power didn’t last because you can’t change fate. In the end it all caught up with him.

The main reason that Macbeth did not succeed was because of the fate proclaimed by the weird sisters. Fate is something that can never be changed no matter what you do to stop it. First, he was very rude to the weird sisters and said to them “How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!” They told Macbeth’s fate by showing him three visions.